North-North-West

“I Will Drive No More Forever” — in honor of the defunct Northwest Book Travelers Association

A column by George Carroll

July 12, 2012

When I started as a publishers’ representative, buyers would tell me of the old days, when a rep would arrive in town on a train, rent a hotel suite and present to all of the area booksellers in one meeting. No one I knew ever actually sold that way or bought books that way, but people remembered when people did it, or had been told about it.

That system evolved into the one with which we’re all familiar. Reps—with improved freeways and cars—drive to bookstores and sell to buyers one-by-one. Depending on their lists, they might see a few accounts or just one in a day. But a lot has changed: the book industry, electronic catalogs, traffic, gas prices, global warming. I thought it was time to adapt.

I’ve driven the stretch between Seattle and Portland at least 400 times in the last twenty years. But last season I instead took the train from Seattle with my friend Rick Simonson of The Elliott Bay Book Company, with the idea I would sell books to him on the train, on our way to a reading in Portland. It took us a while to stop answering email and looking at the view, but somewhere around Olympia we started to work in earnest. Selling books on a train was fantastic. Coffee. Bagels. Watching the South Sound and the Columbia River roll by. When I got into Portland, I took light rail and buses and walked, did a few sales calls, and returned on the train the next night.

Carroll is currently enjoying selling “Pow!” by Mo Yan (above) and “Silent Conversations” by Anthony Rudolf (below). Both will be available in Jan 2013, published by Seagull Books and distributed by The University of Chicago Press.

Last month I took it a little further. I took a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area without renting a car. Here’s how I did it.

No gas stations. No tolls. No idling in traffic. No parking lots, parking meters, searching for parking.

The highlight of the trip was beautiful scenery on the train to Davis, which hugs the coast of the bay and winds through farmland—listened to a golf pro braggart charming up a fellow passenger. The ferry from San Francisco to Larkspur is really a treat, particularly in the late afternoon—watched a kid trying to explain a game on his smart phone to his dad. The books people were reading on the streetcar and BART and the bus was interesting and diverse. On a bus in Berkeley, a woman was talking to herself about the amount of anorexia she sees. Helpful people of every stripe got me to the right bus line, on the right streetcar.

My friend David Stimpson, recently retired, was a bookseller before I was a bookseller and a publishers’ representative before I was publishers’ representative. I sat across from him in sales conferences for about 20 years, our seats predetermined by our seniority, which gave us the ability to share knowing glances, smirks and juvenile hand gestures.

At one time David covered Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Even counting Alaska, my territory of twelve Western states is puny compared to the ground he covered. He’s the only rep I know to have an entire continent in his territory. And David didn’t drive a car. I think the reason he gave me was that he never got around to getting a license, but more likely, it was that he just didn’t feel like it.

Now I know why. There are a lot of benefits and few downsides to public transportation. You can actually work on the train, on BART, on the streetcar. You’re not defensively avoiding other drivers, so it’s less wear and tear on the psyche. It’s cheaper. Much cheaper. It’s greener. Much, much greener.

4 responses to ““I Will Drive No More Forever” — in honor of the defunct Northwest Book Travelers Association”

Talk about a win-win-win-win! If all the people who still preferred a BOOK joined forces with all the sales reps that could (realistically) shop their wares via bus/shuttle/tram/train etc. we could increase sales, be green, put more people to work and world peace would certainly follow! Thank you, George Carroll! I tip my hat to you and other like-minded book folks.

I ditched my car in 2004 in favor of travelling to sales calls by train and bus. After making the NYC to Philly or NYC to Boston drive hundreds of times over the years, making those trips via Amtrak or Bolt bus was a revelation. It generally took me an hour longer to get anywhere, but I got a lot out of those hours- orders filed, books read, music listened to. Instead of fighting rush hour traffic in Philly to get back to NYC, I would enjoy dinner and a beer in the train station, and then hop on the train. Or I’d get dinner to go and eat it on the train.

Congratulations for finding a way to make your sales calls without a car.

This is spot on. Among the most useful intelligence David Stimpson shared with me when I took over much of his territory was bus, train, and shuttle schedules from Halifax to Saskatoon. The joy of calling on booksellers using public transportation has been a pleasant surprise. Montreal is so bike crazy I may even try that next time, though shlepping catalogs may be tricky. Via Rail is lovely, and makes Amtrak seem like a bad joke. Then again Canadians seem to think trains are a good thing, and not the leading edge of communism they are thought to be where I live.